The Bolivarian revolution’s core brutishness, brutality, immorality and total absence of compassion were displayed to the world from Miraflores on 10 January.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro, flanked by National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, the entire Bolivarian cabinet backed by some thousands of “chavistas” chanting “We are Chavez” staged a bizarre ceremony to inaugurate/extend/perpetuate the 14-year government of President Hugo Chavez for another six years, until 10 January 2019.

A small group of current and former “international leaders” including (as @LIVEFROMMIND tweeted) “1 pederast, 1 adulterous priest, 2 dictators, 3 coupsters, 4 thieves, 1bought (tarifado),1 coca grower (cocalero), and 1 Absent president” were also in Caracas to show the radical Latin American left’s unshakable support for President Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution, which personally has paid off so handsomely for them.

The “Absent president” – Chavez – was in Havana’s Cimeq oncology center, hooked up 24/7 to machines to keep the cancer-ravaged leader breathing, fed and evacuated.

But Chavez was officially present in spirit – “We are Chavez,” the crowd chanted, while the visiting adulterous priest, Paraguay’s deposed president Fernando Lugo, declared that “Chavez now belongs to the Americas.”

Maduro, Cabello and gang set Venezuela’s temporary new course in two moves on 8-9 January, clearly orchestrated by a Cuban regime that infects Venezuela’s government as completely as the cancer that is killing Chavez.

First, the PSUV-controlled National Assembly voted on 8 January granted Chavez a “temporary absence” while he recovers from the cancer surgery he had on 11 December. This move extends the current (previous) government that was supposed to end on 10 January for 90 days, and can be extended to 180 days.

Second, Supreme Court chief justice Luisa Estella Morales announced on 9 January that Chavez’s presidency continues unbroken from the 2007-2012 period that ended constitutionally on 10 January 2013, through the 2013-2018 period. In effect, the court ruled that Chavez is an elected president, not re-elected, and the 10 January oath of office mandated by the constitution is irrelevant.

These Bolivarian regime actions perpetuate the government indefinitely. Chavez officially has all the time he might need to recover sufficiently to return to power in Caracas.

Alternately, Chavez also may recover sufficiently to take the new oath of office in Havana before the Venezuelan Supreme Court, which would set up shop in Cimeq, perhaps with Cuba’s government enacting a new law, decree, resolution or whatever establishing that Chavez’s bed in the ICU is sovereign Venezuelan territory – so that formalities can be observed.

Clearly, President Chavez will be kept alive as long as possible with machines, on 24/7 life support, pumped full of narcotics, antibiotics and intravenous fluids until his final heartbeat. How long can this go on? How many weeks or even months? Where is the line between life and death? Would the Bolivarian regime and Cubans keep the body alive on machines even if he is brain dead?

What extraordinary cruelty – keeping a dying man alive with machines and giving the cancer spreading like wildfire through his body more time to chew up his internal organs, climaxing eventually with massive organ failure and systemic infection.

The death of Chavez will be a game-changer for the Bolivarian/Cuban regime. When Chavez is irrevocably dead, the constitution finally will apply – theoretically, at least, given the assembly’s and supreme court’s penchant for doing whatever is politically expedient for the regime’s determination to remain in power.

But when Chavez finally dies, officially, will the Bolivarian/Cuban regime announce that he is dead? Or will the lies continue, with a dead president still officially imparting orders to Maduro and gang? Eventually the truth would come out.

Chavez dead would trigger new moves in this power struggle between chavistas, chavistas and more chavistas – with the Cubans trying to pull everyone’s strings. New presidential elections would have to be called, since it can be assumed reasonably that Chavez won’t survive the first four full years of the 2013-2018 period. The constitution states that if a president is incapacitated any time in the first four years of a six-year period, new elections must be held.

Maduro likely would be the PSUV’s candidate. Chavez officially anointed Maduro as his successor in the presidency on 8 December. Cabello and others might be tempted to undermine Maduro, but the vice president likely would continue in the presidency with the blessing of the assembly and high court, able to tap the state’s resources to fund his election as Bolivarian Venezuela’s new president. Maduro also hopes to capitalize on the Chavez sympathy vote.

But Maduro and the Bolivarian/Cuban regime also confront an explosive problem. The economy is tanking despite last year’s official 5.5% GDP growth, practically all of it due to two consecutive years of massive public spending that left the government with a fiscal deficit equivalent to about 17% of GDP, 20% inflation, and huge consolidated internal/external debts in excess of $200bn by some estimates. Pdvsa also is broken, perhaps beyond repair in its present form, and the private sector has been decimated.

Maduro, Cabello and the rest of the Bolivarian thugs in the current Cabinet are not competent managers by any stretch of the imagination. The can steal and destroy, borrow and spend, but they cannot create productive growth.

The government needs $5 billion per month to finance its deficit, Devil’s Excrement reports, confirming Bank of America’s recent assessment that the Bolivarian regime confronts a $65 billion financing shortfall in 2013 if it doesn’t enact reforms including a substantial currency devaluation, local energy price hikes and such.

The longer these reforms are postponed, the greater the overall macroeconomic impact on the populace. But the reforms will hurt as much as doing nothing. The regime’s options, basically, are to undergo painful economic surgery quickly or postpone the surgery so that the economy grows even sicker than it is now. Today it appears that the Bolivarian/Cuban regime has opted for postponing critically needed economic measures.

This year’s projected financial shortfall of $65 billion is equivalent to over two-thirds of the more than $92 billion of oil export revenues that Pdvsa generated in 2012, according to Central Bank’s preliminary year-end report. Last year imports also totaled about $55 billion, the highest one-year total in memory.

Venezuela imports more and more of everything, and exports less oil. But Venezuelan exports of human talent and capital have boomed during the Chavez era.

Delay could prove politically lethal for Maduro and gang. How will Maduro explain the economy’s crisis this year? Chavez died and the economy also went to hell. Who will he blame besides the gringos and the vast right wing international conspiracy to destabilize Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, steal its oil and enslave its people?

But a dim light glimmers in the past 72-96 hours. Henrique Capriles Radonski put it succinctly. Maduro and gang hold the reins of power; now let them confront/manage the economy’s plunge. The Bolivarian/Cuban regime controls the presidency, national assembly, supreme court, attorney general, solicitor general, and the armed forces.

Capriles Radonski’s defeat in last October’s presidential election may have been the best outcome for his political future, and for the country’s truly democratic forces – notice, we didn’t say “parties,” because most/all of the organized political parties don’t represent anyone except their own very narrow interests.

“I think this is exactly what Chavez wanted,” Devil’s Excrement remarked yesterday as we exchanged New Year’s greetings.

One Response to Digo yo…

As an outsider looking in this paragraph caught my attention more than the rest:

“The death of Chavez will be a game-changer for the Bolivarian/Cuban regime. When Chavez is irrevocably dead, the constitution finally will apply – theoretically, at least, given the assembly’s and supreme court’s penchant for doing whatever is politically expedient for the regime’s determination to remain in power.”

Maybe I am wrong, but I think his death will make him even more “God-like”, if that is possible to his followers and this would be even more of a boost for the Bolivarian/Cuban regime. It is pretty much known that the National Assembly and Supreme Court will do as they are told by him and/or his party.

This is completely off topic, but I feel that until Venezuela goes back to paper ballots that the opposition will lose every election. Why not let the oppo have a couple of state elections so long as they control everything else.